Poetry

Her house was a three year old’s drawingof a house—two windows on the second floorwith two below to flank the door.On the porch a pair of supermarket tubeand webbing chairs in case a guest or twodropped by plus one where she could lean way back,a coverlet across her knees when fallwas in the air or she felt ill.

The shades she always kept exactly so,the ones above just lowenough to hide her on her way to bed,the ones below up high to letsome daylight in. Now that the house is emptyas a drum, they’re every whichwaylike an old drunk’s stare,and somebody’s pinched the supermarket chairs.

Sweet Jesus, forgive me all the days I spottedher in one of them and slunk behind the treesacross the street. A caller on her porchfor all to see she would have ratedwith her trip to England on a plane,or winning first prize for her grapenut pie,or the day that she retired from the Innand they gave her a purple orchid on a pin.

Or having some boy ask her to dance,or being voted president of her class,or some spring morning with her room all warmand sunlit waking up in Spencer Tracy’s arms.

You’ve gone AWOL and onlyJesus can bring you back, not thispoem that I began with the liethat we can overhear your laughter,not hubris or tears and rain.You are an ocean who’s leftthe nest of earth I thought you’d promisednot to. The sky who folded upyour blue tent and took off.

What remained, they packed offto flame. Before the day we satto make your legend in the church,I could almost feel your curious, dare-devil spirit peel itself from the wallof death like a cartoon characterand bop out to explore. So tell mewhat you learned. Is it possibleto breathe astral, heavenly air?

And tell me. Was it worth it?—all that sturm und drang you pitchedagainst our brother Death who’d ratherwork in secret—swelling, hemorrhage,collision of blood cells, collusionover charts, snarled traffic of the body,roads under construction, accident,the rampage of doctors to preventthe clever kleptomaniac from winningas long as possible. He could onlysteal your body. Which I miss, it’s true,oh god, true. The screen door youbanged every afternoon, now silent.

It was not meant as exclusionary,the way the boylaid his arm along the pew,not touching her backbut cupping the bowl of his handover the girl’s shoulder,exactly the wayhis father encircled his motherin decorous Sunday embrace.

Near in age and adoring,his forsaken younger sistersaw the story of all Eve’s children,an enacted parable of man leavingfather and mother to cling to wife,heard Scylla and Charybdis’ seductive hymn,felt the tension of two great loves,perceived in a piercing momentties tighter than the bonds of blood.

Phenomenology, a cruel creed,Preaches its faith in omnipresent ways:“One world alone” is all the creed we need,Empiricism controls all our ways.And so we build our barns and get and store,Laughing at those who sing noumenal songs,Ignoring those who say, “No, there is more,”Scorning an ethic built on “Right” and “Wrong.”In stark contrast, the Galilean Jew,Who used his stories to affirm his creed,Out-Kanting Kant on what we ought to do,Sounded a warning every person needs:“Do not forget, you fool, all bills come due,This night your soul will be required of you.”*

When I was young,Christmas wasn’t very much—a balsam culled from the edge of a field,colored balls in a tattered box,durable strings of colored lights,glorious music in local churches,long, slow winter hours.

Now that I am four fifths old,Christmas is so very much,so bought and sold in Christian bulk, carols slammed down secular streets— bad or worse in slipshod churches.What sea or landfill’s deep enoughto hold the glitter-smashof all these broken ornaments?

I miss the naive Christmaseswhen, four fifths youngin my frugal father’s house,I wrote my hopes on a battered deskin a shadowy hall upstairs—the ceiling high and cold with drafton dragging winter eveningswhen there was no entertainmentbut my mind unentertained, yet knowledge of approaching holiday.Once I dreamed that I worked all night, forgetting—then woke in the downstairs roomas warm as womb: the tree of light.

But most of all,I miss how every modest Christmas morning,disappointment in the presentsfaded quietly and wisely, gone by breakfasteven for us children.

. . . but—who are you again?

Melchior,come backin another searching time.

Searching for what?

The light from the starthat just now is arriving.

The astrologer? One of the three?Why here?

Too much room at the Christian Inn.And who would look for a Magus hereamong this wreckage of untreasured ageand unmined memory?Herod is alive and welland killing babes for no reason at all.This is the manger of 2005and the hay is eating the oxen.

I do not understand you.

What is it in this saturated, satiatedanti-Midas age of yoursthat everything you touch,once gold, turns lead!Even the holy babe we foundis new-born, yes! again this year, but four fifths dead.

Believe I do reject the artificial treeand heart of modern Christmas “season”—

Are there any more like you?

Two or three in beds and hallsand cattle stallson every floor.

Will you take back one Christmas night,one Christmas morning, only, for your use?Will you refuse cartoonish “power” pointedsongs of praise (follow the bouncing ball)projected in what used to be a sacred space,and wait for writing by the hand on temple wallCan we agree?

Joyfully!

Will you come with me?Though I seem to nod in this cushioned chairin the cushioned space of used-to-mean,let word go forth in Herod’s time again:we are at odds with the even powersand will report to no one what we’ve seen.

We’ll secret the strains of ancient songsof love bereft and hope long gone,safe in heart, secure in mind,singing the news between mourn and morn:—for two or three of us old kings he is still born.